Happy holidays! I hope you all are doing well and taking care of yourselves as the weather changes and the holiday obligations start to pile up. 

The latest in climate change news is of course the Fourth National Climate Assessment, released on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. Other climate communicators have already weighed in on the significance of this report, so all I’ll add here is that I, too, was appalled at how America’s national leaders handled its release. And I am as grateful as ever for the scientists, writers and artists, and other climate communicators who continue to make it their life work to bring more awareness to climate change and its devastating effects on our planet. Thank you.

Speaking of climate communicators, I am very excited about the panel on climate change and narrative that I’m moderating at the New York Society Library on December 13th. If you’re in the city, please join us! Otherwise, tune in to the live stream, which you can find on the NYSL Facebook page.

This month is an interview with photographer, filmmaker, and curator, Nathan Kensinger. You may know his work from the twice-monthly photo essay he creates for Curbed NY, wherein he explores New York City’s hidden urban landscapes, off-limits industrial structures, unnatural waterways, environmental disaster zones, and other liminal spaces. Or perhaps you’ve seen or heard about his short documentary film, Managed Retreat, that captures three communities in Staten Island that are being dismantled and returned to nature as sea-level rise becomes a more immediate threat.

Or perhaps you saw him on my “Art and Activism in the Anthropocene” panel that I moderated this past spring at the New York Society Library.

As you can see, Nathan keeps quite busy, so I was delighted that he took the time to do this interview.

Much of your work focuses on hidden and/or abandoned green spaces in urban areas. What attracts you to these places?

I feel like I am drawn to these places for a variety of reasons. It’s partially out of a desire to find some small piece of the natural world, in the middle of our crowded urban landscape. It’s also an interest in understanding how we created the ecosystems we now live in, some of which are terribly polluted. And another reason is that, as a documentarian, my work focuses on exploring overlooked places, and places that haven’t yet had their stories fully told. There are a surprising number of hidden green places in our cities, that have been almost completely forgotten, but that have such important stories.

Please tell us about your recent documentary film, Managed Retreat. What inspired it, and what do you hope audiences take away from it?

Managed Retreat is part of a series of short documentaries I am working on, looking at the uneasy relationship between humans and nature in New York City. The film examines three neighborhoods in Staten Island that are undergoing a “managed retreat” from the waterfront, because of the threats posed by rising sea levels. Basically, in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, the residents in these neighborhoods asked the government to buy their houses, so they could move to somewhere safer. Their homes are now being demolished and turned back into a wetlands. 

I decided to make the film because I’ve been documenting the impacts of Hurricane Sandy over the last six years, and this “managed retreat” was the most interesting response to the the storm that I’ve seen. It’s the first time that New York has decided to relocate entire communities, because of climate change. And very few people have heard of this process – people are not aware that their neighbors are tearing down their own homes, to escape from sea level rise. I’m hoping the film will give audiences a better picture of what may be in store for many other neighborhoods, in the near future.

Is climate change and/or sea-level rise something you think about beyond your artistic work?

I definitely think about climate change all the time, in my daily life. It’s hard to avoid here in New York City, where sea level rise and storms and flooding are already completely changing the landscape. Sometimes, while I’m walking around the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn, I find myself wondering what the city will look like in 50 years, or 500 years, or 5,000 years. What might still be here? What will be underwater? What species will have survived? I’m very interested in which artifacts will survive from our current civilization, for future archaeologists to puzzle over, like the ruins of Carnac. 

What is Chance Ecologies?

Chance Ecologies is an arts project I have been curating for the last few years, along with Catherine Grau of the Queens Museum. It invites artists to consider abandoned post-industrial landscapes in New York City, that have been taken over by other species. Polluted landfills that have become wild-growing meadows and forests, toxic rivers and canals that are also lined by hidden wetlands and bamboo groves. We’ve worked with a whole range of artists, including sculptors, filmmakers, choreographers, architects and scientists, to create a series of exhibits and public events around these forgotten environments.  

Do you think that art and/or artfully created documentaries about climate change can create greater social awareness of the issue?

I definitely think that artists and filmmakers can help highlight the challenges we are facing from climate change. I think artists can be a great conduit, for explaining and interpreting the science of global warming and sea level rise. I sometimes wonder – if you are an artist and you are not looking at climate change in your work, what are you looking at? We are in the middle of one of the biggest mass extinctions in the history of the planet, and artists, filmmakers, and journalists should all be focused on communicating that. 

What’s next for you?

I’m looking forward to sending Managed Retreat further out into the world, and to finishing up work on a couple other short films, about nature in the city. I’m also nearing completion on another project I’ve been working on for the last five years, where I’ve been photographing and writing the story of every river, creek and kill in New York City, and I’ll hopefully be wrapping that up in the coming year. 

Read more about Nathan Kensinger and his work at his website.  

(Top photo by Jason Speakman. Downloaded from Brooklyn Paper.)

This article is part of the Climate Art Interviews series. It was originally published in Amy Brady’s “Burning Worlds” newsletter. Subscribe to get Amy’s newsletter delivered straight to your inbox.

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Amy Brady is the Deputy Publisher of Guernica magazine and Senior Editor of the Chicago Review of Books. Her writing about art, culture, and climate has appeared in the Village Voice, the Los Angeles Times, Pacific Standard, the New Republic, and other places. She is also the editor of the monthly newsletter “Burning Worlds,” which explores how artists and writers are thinking about climate change. She holds a PHD in English and is the recipient of a CLIR/Mellon Library of Congress Fellowship. Read more of her work at AmyBradyWrites.comand follow her on Twitter at @ingredient_x. 

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

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Earlier this year, taking a front row seat at a church in Gary, Indiana, I watched as a young rapper, local food leader and an arts educator beguiled a standing-room-only audience with a theatrical envisioning of their city in the year 2030.

To the side of the stage, jazz legend Billy Foster and his trio added a lively soundtrack to the performance; a multi-media show reflected the images of their stories in the background.

To be sure, this “Ecopolis” performance was no simple task. After a short period of training, developing the script and rehearsing, the actors had to transform the sanctuary into a pop-up theatre and a community of the future in the minds of the audience.

Requiems for Gary’s demise have been written for years, where entrenched poverty and unemployment have left the city in ruins; where the strong scent of hydrocarbons still sting the cold night air. “The maw of that beast, the steel industry,” actor and urban farmer Walter Jones recounted, “takes up nine miles of lakefront.”

“Love song to the scarred lungs, my people bare,” performance poet Krystal Wilson rapped, “because in my city glocks ain’t got nothing on poison and hostile air.”

Departing on a journey through the Gary woods, on the edge of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, one of the most biologically diverse regions in the nation, the local actors walked the audience on a trip from the city’s past as a once proud Steel City to a futurist rendering of Gary as a “regenerative city” in an age of climate change, re-envisioning ways to regenerate their energy, food, transportation, green enterprise zones and a circular economy, neighborhood by neighborhood, front yard garden by front yard garden, bakery by bakery, character by character.

After the performance, the audience convened for lunch outside, catered by urban farmers, where discussions were led by the actors and community organizers on various renewable energy and local food initiatives. Rarely had I encountered such an energy of determination and excitement for change as I experienced in Gary.

The pop-up theatre took the page to the stage–and into the daily lives of the participants. It literally gave everyone a seat at the table. By providing a vision of a regenerative future, and a roadmap of stories to reach it, the performance galvanized action on climate change in a very real way.

At a performance at the Jane Addams Hull-House in Chicago, upstream designs for a zero waste neighborhood were explained in the voice of Magali, standing in front of his row of veggies in a hoop house that looked like a quilt from Somali; carrots, peas, beans, bell peppers, potatoes, cabbage and cloves—what he called the Chicago Sambusa.

On the stage at Appalachian State University, a character walked us through the future Boone EcoDistrict, where retrofitted homes with green roofs and solar energy moved beyond doing less bad, and actually doing something that enhances rather than harms our environment. To give a new framework and vocabulary to our times – to begin the process of regeneration.

After years of filing hundreds of stories, blogs, and radio stories, writing several books and organizing community events, I founded the Climate Narrative Project in 2014 to ask how can we better inform ourselves on the growing peril of climate change and promote regenerative solutions.

In truth, I created the Climate Narrative Project out of a sense of failure. I had spent years – decades, really – investigating and chronicling the devastation of the coal industry on communities, miners and the environment, as well as its impact on carbon emissions. From Appalachia to Illinois to Black Mesa on the Dinetah (Navajo Nation) in Arizona to Montana and the 20 coal-mined states, a health and humanitarian crisis from the lethal fallout of decades of mining had raged under the auspices of flawed regulatory measures, blatant disregard for civil rights, and media indifference. Coal companies and barons who openly flaunted workplace safety and environmental laws walked away free. The cumulative effect of CO2 emissions from coal had altered our future with climate change.

We had simply failed to galvanize the necessary action to learn from our mistakes, atone for our regulatory disasters, and hold coal mining outlaws accountable. The same can be said for the rest of our fossil fuel industries and the political apparatus and ways that have allowed it to flourish.

In effect, while the science of climate change is clear, and abundantly available on campuses and communities across the nation, the art of communication for more sustainable ways of living, planning and development has yet to take the stage in an effective manner.

Bringing together science, the arts and humanities, I have found myself turning more often to the stage with actors who are also deeply engaged in the local arts, food, biodiversity, environmental justice and community development, in order to find new ways to communicate and galvanize action on climate change. Using local history and stories, we have “rooted” our Ecopolis stories on the stage with actors in major cities like Chicago and San Francisco, working with urban planners and arts organizations, and in small towns and college campuses across the Midwest, the South, Appalachia and the Southwest.

Collaborating with fellow artists in leading workshops in creative writing, film, theatre, visual arts and dance, we have worked with schools and communities to design new frameworks and media arts strategies for presenting climate solutions.

The goal: to shape a new climate change narrative.

“How can you be a catalyst for this regenerative city,” the actors asked the audience? “What is your role—and the role of artists, innovators, engineers, teachers, preachers, and entrepreneurs? What is growing in your garden? And can I walk there?”

It all begins with a vision. And a stage.

(Top image: Gary, Indiana.)

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Journalist, historian and playwright, Jeff Biggers is the founder of the Climate Narrative Project, and author of numerous books and plays, more recently Damnatio Memoriae: Una Commedia, and Resistance: Reclaiming an American Tradition.

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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The art and technology worlds can often feel locked in competition, each prizing what the other inadvertently seeks to curtail: the art world eager to preserve and appreciate natural beauty, and the technology world determined to seek enlightenment and advancement. But they needn’t be at odds – and the inaugural CODAsummit held across September 20 and 21 at the Center For Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico proved beyond any doubt that technology can be used to explore and discuss environmental issues.

Organized by CODAworx, an art collective that serves as a central facilitator to bring together talent from all backgrounds and walks of life to collaborate, CODAsummit was created to allow the various links in the art commissioning chain – primarily commissioners (designers, architects, etc.), creators (artists), and suppliers (fabricators and manufacturers) – to congregate and pursue opportunities to develop new and creative cooperative projects.

A recurring theme throughout the many talks was how art projects can communicate the broader significance of our changing environment in ways that scientific statements and papers never could.

This isn’t the first time that the CODAworx community has addressed these ideas. It produced the #OurChangingClimate project of 2015, which used communal workshops and video compilations of personal stories to reframe the concept of climate change from an issue that seems impossibly large and abstract to something with tangible local effects and experiences that everyone could understand.

Let’s take a look at some of the speakers who contributed heavily to CODAsummit’s environmental themes, considering their styles and discussed projects:

Andrea Polli, creator of Energy Flow

Andrea Polli specializes in environmental art that touches upon themes involving science and technology, and has worked on everything from public exhibitions and mobile media to broadcasts and publications. Her work typically draws from scientific data (something that often fails to prove impactful when made widely available), turning stats and figures from abstract notions on computer screens to arresting and eye-opening visual displays.

Appropriately, she participated in the panel entitled “The Art of Depicting Reality: Data Visualization,” and discussed her Energy Flow installation (pictured at the top) that ran in Pittsburgh from November 2016 to April 2018. Powered by wind turbines attached to the catenary arches of the Rachel Carson Bridge, it lit up in response to wind and temperature conditions, showing the activity of the natural world while demonstrating what can be done without recourse to fossil fuels or external power sources.

Cheryl Maeder, creator of Submerge

Cheryl Maeder is a noted photographer and videographer who has worked extensively on impressionistic projects, most notably inspiring Dove’s well-received “’Real Women, Real Beauty” campaign which made a lot of progress towards changing the media’s perception of beauty and women in general. Her fascination with coastal living led her to create her Submerge art series.

Speaking as part of the “Making Waves: New Technologies” segment, she discussed her Submerge installation (pictured above) for the City of West Palm Beach, Florida. Video projections on the underside of the Royal Park Walkway (the bridge connecting West Palm Beach to Palm Beach), were used to explore the extent to which water defines our connection to the environment: making up most of our bodies, covering most of the Earth, and representing both the serenity and the power of the natural world.

Matt Niebuhr, creator of Sun Pavilion 

Matt Niebuhr is an artist who established the West Branch Studio of Des Moines, Iowa. Trained as an architect, he focuses on public art exhibitions and installations, finding ways to combine his architectural skills with community drives.

Also, part of the “Making Waves: New Technologies” segment, Niebuhr spoke about the inspiration for Sun Pavilion, the project he and fellow artist David Dahlquist worked on for the municipal government of the City of El Paso, Texas. The project combines function and form by giving park visitors a place to seek shelter from the heat while artfully playing upon the area’s storied cultural history through the incorporation of ancient sun symbols – early inhabitants of the El Paso region featured them heavily in drawings thousands of years ago.

CODAsummit as a hub for future discussion

With this first CODAsummit selling out and attracting a wide range of talented and passionate attendees, plans are already underway for future instalments. If CODAworx can continue its good work of bringing the art and technology worlds together, so much can be accomplished to make the issue of climate change more present and urgent in the public consciousness, and to place more pressure on governments and corporations alike to act.

After all, what discussions about environmental issues so often lack is that vital context, that emotional gut punch that reminds us of what’s really at stake, and what the consequences of failure will be. The art world is uniquely positioned to do something about this – and with such a passionate community rallying around it, there’s reason to be optimistic.

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Toni Sikes is Founder and CEO of CODAworx, the global leader in commissioned art, serving as a professional network for a wide variety of artists, design professionals, and industry resources.

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

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A pungent odor emerges when I turn the piles of worms and rotting scraps. No matter how many leaves and other materials I add, the smell lingers. My husband and children think I’m crazy, but they get it – it is here with the worms and this scent that I feel connected to life. The smell reminds me of being young and climbing into the dogwood tree near our family’s compost where I’d watch my mother in her garden. Who knew, when I was sitting in that tree, that compost would become my muse and mentor?

I love how pomegranates look on snow and discarded leek greens come to life when mixed with coffee grinds. Small red worms wriggling to escape light make me laugh. The contrasting colors and textures in my compost pile seem to say, “Look at us! Aren’t we beautiful?” I get my camera every time – it’s irresistible. My connection to composting is deep and satisfying.

It began when I made our three-bin system from scratch – milling the lumber from old cedar logs and using a power drill for the first time to assemble it – that was back in 2009. Three times a year, in April, July and November, I manage the pile. It is a messy, smelly job, my fingertips blackening as I sift. Where did all those popcorn kernels, pepper seeds and pomegranate skins go?  They can’t just disappear, and yet they do. Every time. Here among the slimy cucumbers and onion peels, they become something entirely new. The worms transform everything, decomposing the carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen into “black gold.” They wriggle beneath the surface to escape the light and get the job done. No longer garbage, our former food waste transforms into a source of energy. When spread in the garden, the decomposed matter provides needed nutrients. It’s pretty amazing that since I built this system, we have diverted two and a half tons of food and other waste from the landfill.

Compost is like people wrestling with ideas, needing to be turned over, mixed up and mingled with others. I’m still in awe of the magic of biology and chemistry and can’t stop exploring with my camera. The pomegranates against the snow and the leeks mixed with coffee invite me to look more closely. At first it was an artistic celebration of light, color, and texture. Soon my attention shifted to the actual stories of what our bin contained: lemons traveling thousands of miles to our counter, each avocado needing thirty-six gallons of water to grow, the people who planted, picked, and processed these fruits and vegetables and how privileged and thankful I was to have such an array of food fill my body, my kitchen, and this bin of waste. Each scrap became more colorful, textured, and nuanced.

Hundreds of photographs later, it hit me – this is redemption. My hands dirty from sifting, my back aching from carrying – this is renewal. I moved past the structures and science and even the art and understood that really, this was all about love. My camera and the compost guided me. I love every aspect of the process, the product, and what it means. When I care for my own waste, I am, in a small way, taking responsibility for the enormous impact my life has on the planet. In a world filled with economic theories and political discord, the waste, the worms, and the soil are real. It makes me feel powerful – not in a dominating, “I have power over you” way, but in a collaborative, loving, “we can do this” way.

It is that power that inspired my most recent exploration – it’s called Two Degrees. In our attic, my two degrees gathered dust. Together, they weighed 10 pounds. More clutter and stuff in a cluttered world. What would happen if I composted them? As I used an exacto knife and pliers to take apart the frames, I wondered, “Am I crazy?” But when I tore the corner of my University of Virginia MBA, new shapes and textures emerged. I kept going. When I ripped my undergraduate Harvard Fine Arts degree, I noticed how much more interesting the paper became when torn and layered, strewn across the dismantled backing of its former frame.

“Isn’t this what we have to do,” I thought,  â€œnot just see beauty where others see waste, but see beauty in remaking what we know?” A few weeks ago, at my 30th reunion, some classmates were shocked by what I had done. I wonder how shocked they are going to be when our planet surges past the 2-degree Fahrenheit threshold because we didn’t collectively have the courage to reframe our shared narrative, let it decompose a while, and then allow it to reemerge as something new and potentially more beautiful.

On a most fundamental level, there is power in the transformation of waste – it gets me every time. There is also power in the transformation of self. When I see the black gold in the garden and the harvest that results, I know it’s possible. I am grateful for this magical interplay between what I observe with my camera, what I experience with my compost and garden, and what I feel.

For more on food, see our Foodstuff series.

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Evelyn R. Swett is a photographer who is happiest mucking around with compost and comfrey. She has spent the past decade trying to figure out what it takes for a suburban family of four to live within the climate’s means. Evelyn’s photographs focus on this question, emerging from the dynamic interplay between her art and the people and places she loves most. For her, it’s about caring deeply and finding joy. You can learn more about her climate action on her blog, By Degrees.

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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In the past ten years, arts foundations, environmental groups, and governments have encouraged artists to visit the Arctic, where the climate is warming most rapidly. These artists document dramatic changes in the Far North that already affect animal populations, like the  polar bears, and many indigenous people and their traditional cultural traditions and their livelihood. Visual artists, playwrights, musicians, and writers have captured a quickly transforming landscape as they seek to make this distant cold world more accessible for people living in countries that need to pursue climate action plans.

Last month in the Art House, we featured playwright Chantal Bilodeau and her plays set in the Arctic. This month takes another trip to the far North to experience the beautiful and strange sounds that fill the Arctic.

Artist Fritz Horstman talks about his trip to the Arctic Circle to take underwater photographs. The visual landscape of the frozen and thawing North captivated him, but the sounds really inspired him. He asked his fellow artists on the voyage to recreate the creaks and groans of the glaciers for his video, Ice Voices.

Coming up next month, hear poet Tyree Daye read from his book of poetry, River Hymns.

If you like what you hear, you can listen to full episodes of Citizens’ Climate Radio on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, SoundCloud, Podbean, Northern Spirit Radio, Google Play, PlayerFM, and TuneIn Radio. Also, feel free to connect with other listeners, suggest program ideas, and respond to programs in the Citizens’ Climate Radio Facebook group or on Twitter at @CitizensCRadio.

This article is part of The Art House series. 

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As host of Citizens’ Climate Radio, Peterson Toscano regularly features artists who address climate change in their work. The Art House section of his program includes singer/songwriters, visual artists, comics, creative writers, and playwrights. Through a collaboration with Artists and Climate Change and Citizens’ Climate Education, each month Peterson will reissue The Art House for this blog. If you have an idea for The Art House, contact Peterson: radio @ citizensclimatelobby.org

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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